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Edmund Joseph Sullivan (1869-1933), usually
known as E.J. Sullivan, was a British book
illustrator who worked in a style similar to Art Nouveau.

Sullivan was the son of an artist. He, however, decided to
concentrate on the emerging field of graphic design and book illustration,
which was flourishing at the end of the nineteenth century.
Sullivan worked at the Daily Graphic from the age of nineteen,
moving to the Pall Mall Magazine in 1893. During this period he
produced standard news and portrait illustrations, but began to
work on illustrations to literature at the Magazine. He soon
graduated to the more prestigious role of book illustrator,
producing illustrations for editions of Lavengro and the plays School for Scandal and The Rivals. Sullivan's
style is comparable to that of Aubrey Beardsley, but is more romantic
than acerbic, in Beardley's manner.

He also illustrated The Compleat
Angler and Tom Brown's Schooldays. By the
end of the decade Sullivan's designs were in high demand, leading
to the publication of his most ambitious work, an illustrated
edition of Thomas
Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, published in
1898. This contains 79 illustrations ranging
from emblems to full page pictures. Sullivan adapted his style to
use the faux-Rococo techniques
he had developed in his play-illustrations in order to combine them
with bizarre images of strange fantastical figures, drawing on the
genre of the grotesque.
Sullivan later also illustrated Carlyle's The French
Revolution, though his work was far less varied than for
Sartor Resartus. He used the same combination of Rococo
and Grotesque to emphasise the violence erupting into the
decorative world of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette's court.

Later books included The Rubaiyat of Omar
Khayyam, using images of skeletons and animated pots. One
of the former made its way onto the cover of a Grateful Dead
poster in 1966, and later compilation albums. Sullivan also used
his skills of satire in 1916 in a collection of wartime designs
called the Kaiser's Garland, which attack Prussian
militarism.